Jo-Wilfried Tsonga put together one amazing run last week in Canada and was rewarded for his efforts with his first tournament victory of 2014, as he easily disposed of Roger Federer to earn the first Rogers Cup title of his career.
Fast forward less than forty-eight hours and the talented Frenchman was back to being his usual inconsistent self, falling in straight sets to Mikhail Youzhny in the opening round of the Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati, Ohio. It took the ATP Tour vet just over an hour to send the No. 10 player in the world packing, 6-1 and 6-4, as Tsonga looked nothing like the player who had just knocked off four of the top ten players in world in Toronto.
Going as deep as he did at the Rogers Cup clearly took its toll on Tsonga and when you combine the quality of competition he faced over his last four matches in the Great White North, (Grigor Dimitrov, Novak Djokovic, Federer and Andy Murray), with the quick turnaround time and perhaps we should not be shocked to see him come out flat in Cincinnati.
To his credit, Youzhny used a sloppy start from his opponent to his advantage. The thirty-two year old jumped out to an early lead and never looked back. The former No. 8 seed dictated the pace of the match from start to finish and Tsonga either had no response or nothing left in the gas tank.
The victory was the 450th of Youzhny’s career and leaves him just twenty-four wins shy of Nikolay Davydenko for second place on the all-time list among Russian born players. The No. 25 player in world will face Italy’s Andreas Seppi in round number two, as he dismissed Colombia’s Santiago Giraldo in three tough sets, 6-4, 2-6, 7-5.